two - Theoretical and conceptual issues in the extending working lives agenda

Summary

Introduction

Governments across the Global North are facing the reality of ageing populations and ageing workforces. These demographic changes have resulted in a debate that, to a great extent, has described the ageing population as a challenge to welfare provision and benefits. The reasoning is that the tax base is shrinking as the majority of older workers leave the labour market too early, often before state pension age. The focus of debate and policy development for extending working life has therefore mainly been based on economic perspectives. This is different from, for example, the comprehensive and long-running political debate on the need for increased labour market participation among women, which argues that women's participation in working life is a matter of democracy, justice and improving the way in which the competence and resources in society are utilised, rather than as just an economic necessity (see, eg, Hernes, 1987). It is also clear that the debate on older people's extended participation in working life is not based on a social movement, such as the one putting forward demands for job opportunities for women. Rather, it is an issue raised and motivated largely by groups other than older workers themselves.

While the rates of older worker labour market participation vary considerably across countries (as discussed in Chapter One), there is a common response among international, European and national authorities that extending working lives by encouraging people to work for longer and delay retirement is a necessity for the foreseeable future (OECD, 2006, 2011; Munnell and Sass, 2008; Magnus, 2009; Vickerstaff, 2010). Further, a new era is needed in which assumptions about the desirability and acceptability of early retirement, which had become embedded in the later part of the 20th century, are replaced by a new willingness to work longer. A common national policy response to this scenario has been to propose or to raise the ages at which people are eligible to take their state pension, hoping thereby to nudge people to delay retirement (for a full discussion of policy responses, see Chapter Three).

The policy debate about extending working lives has, to a great extent, characterised older people as the problem. It is their patterns of participation in working life and decisions on retirement that are the focus, and, as such, the debate has depended on the use of categorical stereotypes.